The 2007 season finale of TV phenom Lost ended with an all-timer twist: What had seemed like the show's routine flashback storyline, filling in the events that preceded its characters ending up in island purgatory, was actually a flash forward. Protagonists Jack and Kate were somehow safe in Los Angeles after three seasons of being stuck on the mysterious island. Escaping had been the whole point of the show—or so we thought, until a broken Jack cried "We have to go back!"

This is now how I feel about, frankly, a lot of technology. Not long before that episode aired I'd gleefully dropped $1,000 on my first HD display, a 26-inch 1366x768 Samsung LCD that served as my college dorm TV and doubled as my computer monitor. For the time it was state of the art, so much thinner and sharper and better than the CRT monitor still attached to the family PC.

Or was it?

Twenty years later, experts who are tuned into the minutia of display tech are still trying to get back what we lost.

"People older than 40 will generally remember the motion clarity of CRTs, while younger people who've never seen a CRT will not remember," says Mark Rejhon, founder of the website Blur Busters. For years, Blur Busters' "Test UFO" browser tool, starring a little green man in a red saucer, has served as the de facto way to judge the clarity of objects in motion on modern displays. Compared to older CRT monitors, the LCDs of the mid-2000s were particularly terrible, their pixels taking an eternity to change from one color to another and leaving a nasty "ghost" trail on fast-moving images.

The TV I spent an entire month's paycheck on was better than average for its day, but the novelty of the HD era made me overlook then what's far more obvious now: the richer colors and smoothness of a CRT that I gave up, and wouldn't get back for nearly two decades.

Today's high refresh monitors are far better than the smeary, washed out LCDs of the 2000s—but even the best of the best are still chasing the clarity of CRTs, which means Rejhon is chasing it too.

Cathode ray 'tude

In late 2024 Rejhon debuted a "breakthrough algorithm for simulating a CRT tube" alongside former Nvidia developer Timothy Lottes, which takes advantage of 240+ Hz displays to drastically reduce visible motion blur in retro games and other content that's locked at 60 Hz.

The trick, to grossly simplify some extremely complicated tech, is recreating the visual "phosphor fade" of a CRT, which is gentler on the eyes and less flickery than harsh black frame insertion (BFI), the previous go-to method for cutting down on blur as pixels swap from one color to another.

"The two main ways to reduce display motion blur is either flicker the frames (like a CRT) or add more frame rate (for high Hz)," Rejhon said. "Both methods will show frames more briefly, like a fast camera shutter, and result in less display motion blur. CRTs could flicker pixels brightly for less than 1/1000 second. The bonus with CRT is you do not require more frame rate to achieve low motion blur."

If that's still tough to wrap your brain around, think of the CRT simulation as DLSS, but for motion instead of resolution: When it's working just right, a game locked at 60 frames per second could look just as smooth and clean as one running at, say, 540 frames per second, without needing an RTX 5090 to hit those numbers.

540 Hz is the refresh rate of the ROG PG27AQWP-W Asus sent me for testing, an ideal monitor for getting the most out of CRT simulation. It even has a 720 Hz mode if you drop the resolution to 720p; and the higher the refresh, the more you can reduce the perceived motion blur. Unlike LCDs, OLED panels can go completely black (there's no backlight to bleed light) and get extremely bright, getting much closer to the contrast CRTs naturally offered. And the high refresh rate helps recreate the electron beam that would travel down a CRT screen to "draw" the image.

This effect isn't just a nostalgia thing: As Rejhon notes on BlurBusters, "60 Hz BFI and strobing flickers a lot" because you're flashing a black frame in between each one from your game. By comparison, the top-to-bottom scanning effect is less harsh: "CRT simulation is much gentler for 60 fps content, because of phosphor fade & rolling scan. Some light is emitted somewhere else on the screen all the time."

Despite the perfect hardware to test on, though, CRT simulation is so bleeding edge I practically sliced my brain to ribbons trying to get it working earlier this year.

The first actual implementation of BlurBusters' tech was in a shader for the emulation frontend Retroarch, but soon after it was built into an experimental branch of a standalone app called ShaderGlass, a great overlay for Windows that lets you apply hundreds of visual effects to whatever's on your desktop—scanlines, the fuzziness of an analog video signal, and so on. But the CRT beam simulation is so much more complex than a typical video shader, app developer Mausimus decided to split it off into a separate tool: ShaderBeam.

"The ideal application of beam simulation technology requires perfect synchronization with both the display (it cannot afford to drop a single frame even at those high refresh rates, since that causes very noticeable flashing) and input content (for aligning source frame generation with simulated CRT refresh rate)," said Mausimus. Right now, it's the best way to use Rejhon's algorithm.

Shader dreams

ShaderBeam doesn't involve much setup: launch its executable and use a hotkey to apply the shader on top of a game window. How simple it looks belies how hard the visual effect is to pull off when you don't work at Microsoft, AMD or Nvidia.

"ShaderBeam tries to use whatever's available, like screen capture and window transparency (even though these technologies weren't designed with this use case in mind at all and provide no timing guarantees whatsoever), to compensate for the inability to insert itself into the rendering pipeline from source content to display," Mausimus said. "It's at the mercy of opaque scheduling algorithms built into the OS and GPU drivers, hoping it can eke out enough resources to maintain its timing."

The ideal ShaderBeam setup involves disabling usual niceties like VRR, turning off all sorts of features in your graphic's cards driver settings, unplugging secondary monitors, using Process Lasso to give it higher priority, and even a registry edit. It includes the novel idea of splitting up the responsibilities of rendering the game and the CRT shader to two GPUs. If your processor has a built-in GPU, using it can help avoid a desync between the rate at which your game is spitting out frames and the rate at which ShaderBeam can apply the CRT beam simulation.

"By moving beam simulation to another GPU there is less contention for the primary GPU's time and effectively better scheduling consistency; it does provide a much more stable experience," Mausimus said. "The issue with single GPU isn't lack of GPU power, rather its unpredictable distribution."

If ShaderBeam "isn't given enough GPU time by the OS to present a frame on time," you'll experience some flashing—which I discovered by pushing my Intel chip's iGPU to output at 1440p at 540 Hz. Then I struggled through consistent stuttering while trying ShaderBeam with various emulators and shooters like Quake and Amid Evil, which led me down the rabbit hole of display subframe timing, where the minutia of monitor technology quickly becomes more and more arcane.

This all might sound like a borderline deranged amount of effort just to play a game like Nintendo's Metroid Prime 2: Echoes in GameCube emulator Dolphin, one of my test cases, the way I first saw it on the CRT in a high school friend's bedroom. I felt like a mad scientist (emphasis on the mad) while trying to troubleshoot stutters, flicker, and color banding for hours on end.

Even when everything is calibrated just right, there's also the possibility a game itself can throw a wrench in things—Unreal Engine 5's penchant for stuttering will naturally throw off the frame pacing of the CRT simulation, too, for example.

But when I started rolling Samus's morph ball in a tight circle and realized the room's columns remained pin sharp even as the camera whirled around, I got a glimpse of what Rejhon and Mausimus have been fighting for. "On moving objects (or the scene if you look around) the shader should allow you to see the individual pixels; normally they all just get blurred out," Mausimus said, using the intricate textures on a Quake column as a prime example. Factorio is another good test case: "It has this really smooth movement of the whole scene when you walk around without the shader, the pixels get blurred together, but with the shader you should still be able to see the details even when moving."

Hard Locked

On top of a vast library of 60 Hz console games, these PC classics would benefit from CRT simulation.

It almost feels uncanny once your eyes pick up on details that would normally be just a blur—the difference is as dramatic as switching to a higher refresh rate in a game you've only ever controlled at 30 fps. But it's frustratingly difficult to describe or demonstrate, since capturing the effect on camera is tough and impossible to perceive without a 240 Hz+ display, anyway.

Future vision

As impressive as ShaderBeam is, it ultimately requires a level of fiddling and compromise that I don't think make sense for anyone right now. It intermittently brings back what we left behind when we abandoned CRTs, but ultimately makes me think the real solution is either going to come from new hardware—like the next generation of Nvidia's Pulsar monitors—or from Microsoft digging into the guts of Windows to change some of the stuff that happens in between .exe and screen.

"Even if ShaderBeam's makeshift workarounds never reach levels of consistency needed for wide adoption, the hope is that they will boost users' interest in having this kind of technology properly supported by OS, GPU and display manufacturers," Mausimus said.

Rejhon seems bullish about that eventually coming to pass… but these things take time.

"In the future, when shader hooks are built into operating systems, as well as video-processing GPUs are integrated into the display of the 2030s, it will be much more user friendly," he predicted. "This is part of the advocacy that is being encouraged by Blur Busters' Open Source Display Shaders Initiative."

ShaderBeam's goal of awakening PC gamers to the benefits of CRT simulation worked on me, at least. I'm convinced we have to go back—even if it means dragging the people in charge of graphics drivers back to CRT paradise with us.

IDC Research has released its figures regarding worldwide PC shipments in the third quarter of 2026, and would you believe it, they've dropped considerably. Looking at the year-over-year numbers, the shipped units dropped from 78.5 million in Q3 2025, to 62.7 million in Q3 of this year. That's a 20.1% plummet, for percentage fans.

But why, I hear you asking. Actually, I don't. The memory and supply chain crisis, driven by AI server demand is pinpointed by the IDC as the primary driver of the decline, which will come as no surprise to those of us in non-rock-based abodes.

However, it's worth looking a bit deeper into exactly what's happened here. The "pull-in" of stock created by vendors buying up supply in the first half of this year (in anticipation of the forecasted price hikes) has essentially borrowed volume from the second half, according to the report. As a result, this boosted the early year shipments and "left Q3 starved of demand."

"The result is a broken seasonal pattern: the third quarter is normally larger than the second, and this year it fell short," says the IDC. It's bad out there folks—and this report predicts that things might get gloomier for the industry in the near future.

"Channel concern over high inventory and soft demand at elevated prices could bring promotions in the near term, but pricing will stay well above year-ago levels," the report continues. "The bigger risk is macro: conditions have worsened since last quarter, and a weaker economic backdrop could push demand lower and darken the outlook for the remainder of 2026 and into 2027"

I love writing good news stories. It's a shame I don't get a whole lot of them these days. My heart almost leapt when I read this quote from IDC research director Jitesh Ubrani: "Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand. That could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers..."

Then dropped again at the second half of the sentence: "... but we don’t expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago. Prices will remain elevated. With macro conditions worsening, the risk is that the outlook for the next few quarters gets worse before it gets better."

Anyway, the report also points out that this economic pain was not felt evenly, as Lenovo, HP, and Dell fell faster than the market and collectively lost 4.2 points of share, with HP being the hardest hit, dropping from 19.1% to 16.5%.

Lenovo is still the biggest shipper of PCs overall, though, and the three companies keep their same positions in the rankings as they did this time last year, with HP coming in second and Dell in third. In fourth position is Apple, which has also seen an 11.3% drop in growth, and in fifth place comes Asus, with its own growth figures dropping by 8.6%.

Well, I don't think any of us can say we're shocked to hear this news. With the crisis continually predicted to worsen from those in the know, (like Micron's CEO, who recently took the opportunity to ram that point home over and over again), it looks like PC pricing is screwed for a while to come yet. "Promotions are possible," the report handily sums up. "However, prices are expected to remain elevated and well above where they were at the same time last year."

In a totally unrelated question, did you buy a PC recently, and are you interested in letting it go for a reasonable sum? Asking for a friend. No pressure, take your time, I can wait here, etc, etc. Got any spare memory modules while we're at it?

Have you ever clicked on a Steam Deck Verified game, attempted to boot it up, and realised it probably shouldn't have been verified? Well, Steam's new system should help developers give a more accurate understanding of how their games run on the Steam Deck.

As of October 1 (via TechPowerUp), Valve has given developers access to frame rate data as reported by Steam Deck users. A developer can see the frame rate that users are playing at as a percentage of sessions, meaning they can see if it runs well (at the Steam Deck's usual 60/90 fps cap) or not (users are generally lowering the fps limit).

That does mean it's only data willingly shared, and there are some caveats. The LCD Steam Deck has a max refresh rate of 60, while the OLED model goes up to 90. As games are often capped for fps to save resources, that will shape the stats somewhat. In addition, it can't guarantee how Steam Deck owners use their devices.

That being said, giving access to a high enough volume of data means that the fps averages should balance out in a bell curve, assuming enough players opt in. Valve claims "a majority of Steam Deck players have opted in".

The major benefit of this update is that developers can see how their games run on a mass of Steam Decks, and therefore adjust graphical options. This could be particularly valuable in games like Cyberpunk 2077 that have a dedicated Steam Deck mode. If developers notice those on handhelds aren't getting 60 fps or can't hit a smooth 30 average fps, they might tweak the settings a tad.

Valve has even explained that Steam Deck data is just a "starting point for iteration as we learn what sorts of data and presentation are useful."

That means, if successful, other devices could get the same data grouping. If enough Legion Go S users submit their data, or sales of the Steam Machine are high enough, it could get valuable data to developers.

This is, however, assuming that developers will tweak games for these devices. It only works for verified games, so it can't be used as part of the verification process as of right now.

Still, if mass reports of poor performance on Steam Deck start coming in for verified games, this means devs can really dig into the numbers to see what the average player is experiencing. Devs can then see in real time where updates positively or negatively impact performance. More data is always a good thing in my book.

We've been running a knockout tournament that puts graphical effects in games against one another in a fierce battle of public opinion. Each round saw two effects go head to head, and only one made it out to fight another day. We whittled it down to just two effects, chromatic aberration and motion blur, and after 7,000 votes cast across the tournament, we can finally declare the effect that sucks the most with near-scientific certainty:

It's motion blur. By an absolute landslide.

Which is worse, chromatic aberration or motion blur?

Here are the results of the poll. We received close to 2,000 entries.

Votes (%)

Chromatic aberration

20

Motion blur

80

020406080

Percentage

Votes (%) Data

Product	Value
Chromatic aberration	20
Motion blur	80

Not to completely disenfranchise our engaged readers or make the past couple of weeks putting these together a complete and utter waste of time for yours truly, but it was always going to be motion blur. I knew this. You knew this. We all knew this—deep down in our heart of hearts.

Motion blur

You'll have to take my word for it that both of these screenshots were taken as I aimed swiftly to the side in Hunt: Showdown. The difference is day and night.

on

off

In previous rounds, I left you lot to "well, actually" in the comments section, and boy, did we get a lot of discussion on these articles. I've seen the highs and lows of human emotion down there. Raw, unadulterated passion for game effects, that's what I'd describe it as.

Anyways, this time, since we're sorta picking on motion blur specifically, I will give this effect its dues.

In some cases—low frame rates, and most especially on consoles—and in some genres—racing games among them—there can be a time and a place—used sparingly—for motion blur. It is, ultimately, a means for covering up some of the imperfections of games. Moreover, for PC gamers, it is most frequently optional. These effects often are because you get to tinker with stuff on PC.

Motion blur on in Hunt: Showdown:

Motion blur off in Hunt: Showdown:

Even if I think motion blur is the devil, it doesn't mean I want it gone from every game's settings menu. Keep it. In fact, turn it on, see if I care (I care, stop that).

That said, it is often on by default, and it doesn't turn off when some performance criteria is met. The first thing I do upon booting any game is go into the settings menu and uncheck the motion blur box. That's just a habit now. That's ingrained into my psyche like brushing my teeth or raising my eyebrows and widening my eyes when someone tells me a secret.

If developers keep turning it on, I'll keep turning it off. So on and so forth until we all perish. This big blue ball keeps spinning anyways. This article has gotten away from me now. See ya 👋

Cheating: it's why we can't have nice things. Whether your online shooter of choice is beset by players targeting you through walls, or you're a Linux user who would definitely be playing more games were it not for kernel-level anti-cheat systems, the actions of a few spoil the fun for many. Banning cheating players is the obvious thing to do, but what's to stop bad eggs making fresh accounts?

A student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has a few ideas. Named Christopher B. Didriksen, the student even based his Master's thesis on one possible biometric-based solution. Sharing some of his research findings on Reddit, Didriksen explained that players in Counter-Strike 2 can be differentiated based on how they use their mouse and keyboard in-game. Based on these movements, repeat offenders could then be identified and banned for good.

The researcher analysed a number of 'demos' resulting from competitive CS2 matches. Using the two separate signals from a player's mouse and keyboard during these demos, a 'fingerprint' can be identified that "stays stable across maps, sessions, settings [...] across matches played months apart, and across a sensitivity change from 800 to 640 eDPI." By the sounds of it, you will shine through no matter what bargain bucket peripheral you may use to game.

In a dataset of more than 1,000 players, mouse movement biometrics correctly identified players "every time [...] but often only by a fine margin," and keyboard use "picked out the right player 98% of the time." Cross-referencing these two metrics identifies the humans behind the accounts with a high rate of accuracy. Didriksen writes that this method "found smurfs nobody had reported, and it is fast enough to check every new match against all of CS2's monthly players."

For those a little unclear what those tiny blue fellas have to do with Counter-Strike 2, 'smurf' is the term for a secondary account belonging to an otherwise experienced or high-ranking player. Didriksen proposes that his movement 'finger-printing' system would "sit next to [Valve Anti-Cheat] and Trust Factor and answer the one question they can't. Is this the same human?"

The motivation for Didriksen's thesis was a dissatisfaction with existing anti-cheat and banning systems—essentially, a banned player could make a new 'smurf' account and be "back in a match the same evening." Didriksen notes his proposed method is not a perfect solution to this problem, as it essentially removes the possibility that a banned player may change their cheating ways on a fresh account. He also notes that his fingerprinting system is easily confounded by shared accounts.

Still, a number of Redditors signed up to participate in Didriksen's research earlier this year, with some even revealing their Smurf accounts. Didriksen says this "turned out to be some of the most valuable data I had." For this reason, he goes on to tell the r/CS2 subreddit, "The thesis is now finished and got an A, and none of it would have been possible without you."

And they said videogames could never teach you anything!

Razer's new Basilisk V4 Pro and V4 HyperSpeed gaming mice are here, and with them comes a controversial new software feature: Perfect 180, an option that allows you to assign a quick 180 degree turn to a mouse button. Which, as Razer puts it, 'gives competitive FPS players the edge to react to threats from any direction.'

The feature is said to be designed for low-sensitivity players, who would otherwise struggle to turn around to face a threat behind them at speed. By the looks of the Synapse screenshots, Perfect 180 can be configured for specific games—and allows the player to spin in either direction, with the option to tweak the count configuration.

I'll be honest—if I saw a player spin round near-instantly to blast me in a multiplayer shooter, I'd likely be calling "hax" at the earliest opportunity. I come from the old school of gaming, where movement responses like this were a sure sign someone was running a third-party aim assist.

Which, back in my day, was considered cheating. And still is. This is an official Synapse feature, though, not some shady program downloaded from a dodgy website. Razer seems quite pleased with it, but the whole thing has echoes of the SOCD/Snap Tap debacle not so long ago.

I suppose, if I was being charitable, I could point out that you'd often have to aim even after you've flipped around 180 degrees, so it's not an aim assist per se. More of a turn assist. A Snap Twist, if you will. Still, it's a gaming movement-enhancing feature outside the bounds of the actual game, at the very least.

Anyway, you've now seen Razer's clip of Perfect 180 in action yourself—what do you think? Is it cheating, or are we at a point where these sorts of hardware-led gaming assists are becoming acceptable? Do let me know. Although if I look into my crystal ball, I think I can see where this one might be going...

I'm a sucker for an ergonomically shaped mouse, particularly those with a futuristic design. Which is why I was pleased to have a mess around with the now-announced Razer Basilisk V4 at Gamescom a few months back. It's on the larger side for a gaming rodent, and comes in two flavours: the Basilisk V4 Pro and the Basilisk V4 HyperSpeed.

Those familiar with Razer's naming schemes will likely deduce that the HyperSpeed is the more reasonably-priced version, coming in at $110, while the Pro version has a $170 MSRP.

The Pro gets a 50K optical sensor with 930 IPS tracking speed and 90G acceleration, alongside Frame Sync to match sensor scanning with the polling rate, while the HyperSpeed uses a 33K, 500 IPS unit.

Both also support 8K polling in both wired and wireless modes.

Both mice feature four side buttons, one of which can be configured within Razer's Synapse software to enable a "Perfect 180" feature. As the name suggests, this snaps your aim around a full 180 degrees with a single click, which feels a bit unfair on your opponents. SOCD/Snap Tap all over again? Perhaps.

Razer says the feature is "built for low-sensitivity gaming." I've had the chance to game on a few esports player's setups, and one in particular had such a low DPI, my entire arm had to move across the mousepad to perform a 90 degree turn—never mind a full flip around to my rear.

Still, if I was sneaking up behind a player in DayZ (more my kind of speed) and they turned around in an absolute instant, I'd be tempted to yell "hax!" like the teenager I really am. It's likely to be controversial, I reckon.

As for the meeces themselves, I'm a big fan of the shape and overall design. The extra side buttons are well placed, the heavy tilt over to the right feels very natural to use, and the four-way tilt scroll wheel with free-spin mode is rather lovely under the fingers. Both models also get Razer's Gen-4 tactile switches, which are supremely clicky and precise in all the right ways.

The mice can also be charged wirelessly with the Razer Mouse Dock V2 Pro (which also functions as an 8K transceiver device), or on existing Razer wireless charging mouse pads. As you would expect (and like the mice themselves), it's been gifted with a heavy dose of Chroma RGB effects. These are Razer products, after all.

In terms of connectivity and battery life, Razer says that players can enjoy up to 200 hours on a HyperSpeed Wireless Gen-2 connection at 1,000 Hz, and up to 275 hours using Bluetooth 6.2.

So, the Basilisk is back—but this time with a few party tricks up its sleeve. I'd expect Razer to bring performance-enhancing features to the table with any new release, but I feel like this one might cause a bit more controversy than most. My only real surprise, though, is it didn't get a more catchy name. Snap Twist? You can have that one for free.

The HP Omen 35L with the RTX 5080 I wrote about yesterday was pretty eye-popping, but at $2,800, it's still too rich for my blood. A 44% discount is nice, but I would still struggle to justify dropping three grand on even a prebuilt of this calibre. And I bet I'm far from the only one.

Never fear, though—if you have slightly less deep pockets but still want a 50-series prebuilt gaming PC, I've found two more deals with 32 GB of RAM for your consideration. Picking between the two, however, might be a touch difficult.

Quick list

• Skytech Gaming PC Desktop | RTX 5070 | $1,700 (save $200)
• MSI Codex R2 Gaming Desktop | RTX 5070 | $1,700

RTX 5070 gaming PC deal #1

The first machine that piqued my keen was a Skytech Gaming prebuilt. This bad boy boasts an RTX 5070, 1 TB of SSD storage, and even 32 GB of RAM for $1,700 from Amazon. Obviously, that's not the full story and the bigger picture is not without caveats.

Let's get this out of the way: that's 32 GB of DDR4. That's still not awful given these times of memory supply crisis, but it's still not DDR5. Such an offering is perked up a bit by the inclusion of the Intel Core i7 14700F processor, which remains great for gaming.

RTX 5070 gaming PC deal #2

Moving swiftly on to my second suggestion: the MSI Codex R2, which is also going for $1,700 at Walmart. This is another prebuilt machine rocking an RTX 5070, 1 TB of SSD storage, and 32 GB of DDR5. So, what's the catch?

It's the processor, which is the Intel Core i5-14400F. A successor to the Core i5 13400F, it's by no means a terrible processor but it is very much a budget option. For sure, many more reasonably priced prebuilts keep costs down by choosing this very CPU.

That means you've got the option to upgrade the chip down the line, which may be a more cost-effective strategy for some than planning to upgrade to DDR5 in the future (unfortunately, it doesn't appear the memory supply crisis and its runaway prices will be ending any time soon). But the choice is up to you: while gaming PC prices are soaring in general, are you willing to compromise on memory or the CPU?

Gigabyte is readying its B760 and H610 motherboards for new LGA1700 processors. Wait, what year is it?

"Built on socket LGA1700 and expected to launch in early 2027," Gigabyte says in a post on its website, "the new processors bring fresh performance to an established platform, and Gigabyte users can be ready from day one."

These are new LGA1700 chips. We're talking about fresh spins on Raptor Lake and Alder Lake here, which previously made up the 12th/13th/14th Gen, and were last released as a major launch in 2023. That's a long time ago in CPU land. We've had two consecutive launches since, in Arrow Lake and the Arrow Lake refresh, neither of which dented AMD's stranglehold on the enthusiast market with its X3D chips.

So what chance do these old chips have of selling anything? Quite a good one, actually, as these old chips still support DDR4 memory.

DDR4 memory is currently a lot cheaper than DDR5 memory. We've seen big price hikes on both, but you can grab a DDR4-3600 32 GB kit for around $210 and a DDR5-6000 32 GB kit for $480. Ouch.

Back in August, Intel VP and GM for enthusiast channel, Robert Hallock, confirmed that Raptor Lake chips would stick around in Intel's portfolio for "years to come". He specifically notes DDR4 support as to why:

"LGA1700 is still a good socket. Lots of people [are] still interested in DDR4, so [we’ll] keep offering, and you'll see [pricing] smooth out over time. It'll come back to normal. That's the plan."

So, older, cheaper chips that support older, cheaper memory sticks. That's the plan, and I get why Intel is doing it. It is uniquely placed to offer an upgrade path between memory generations with its chips. What I mean by that is, these older chips have a memory controller that supports both DDR4 and DDR5, depending on the motherboard one buys.

As Gigabyte notes, "With Gigabyte's latest BIOS, owners of existing B760 and H610 motherboards, DDR5 and DDR4 models alike, can step up to upcoming processors in three simple moves: download the BIOS, update, and drop in the new CPU. There's no board replacement, no system rebuild, and no complicated setup. Just a fresh wave of performance, delivered through the platform you already trust and love."

In theory, one could actually upgrade from DDR4 to DDR5 with a new motherboard and one of these chips, though DDR4 is just fine for gaming, so that's not going to amount to much performance gain. Rather, I'd hope to see more cores and performance at lower price tags from these coming chips, in turn offering a great drop-in upgrade for anyone with an older chip that can't afford the large leap to a whole new system right now.

If you've got an Amazon account, then you likely already realise Jeff Bezos' corporate empire is hoovering up your data so it can better sell to you. What's surprising is when Amazon actually offers a peek behind that vast curtain of data, revealing what it's learnt about you and potentially reading you for filth in the process.

Amazon's 'About You' feature rolled out back in May. It gained more attention this week after one Threads user's viral post appeared to show that, based on her 'Product Preferences,' Amazon thought she had "flat buttocks." They weren't the only ones left "literally speechless," as another user shared that Amazon had noted they do "not trust people easily." A Reddit user posted that Amazon had noted they apparently get "a tired gray cast from lack of sleep".

Obviously, I had to take a look at whatever strays I was catching from the About You feature myself. Alas, my About You is frightfully boring and served only to remind my lactose-intolerant self that I prefer 'plant-based milk' and that I 'systematically [replace] consumable household items' like my preferred brand of milk that doesn't make my tummy hurt. So, I opened up the question to the wider PC Gamer team.

To check out your own About You on desktop, you'll need to hover over 'Hello, [your name]' on Amazon, select 'Account' from the menu, then navigate to 'Ordering and shopping preferences,' click 'Your Shopping preferences,' and then look under 'Manage your information'. It's a little easier on mobile, where you just need to tap the menu icon in the bottom bar, then tap 'Account,' then 'Shopping preferences,' and finally 'About you.'

News writer Josh quipped that "Amazon says I'm a brain jenious," before sharing that his About You notes that he "favors classic and intellectual literature," "reads extensively across literary genres," and that he "strategically purchases books during major sales." So far, so flattering, though the feature also claims that he apparently "goes camping occasionally" though Wolens says, "The last time I went camping I was 11."

looked up mine and this is killing me lmao

— @alecrobbins.bsky.social (@alecrobbins.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-10-08T18:15:04.215Z

Indeed, About You isn't all that smart. Comic artist Alec Robbins shared a screenshot suggesting About You had noted "Customer's name is Shingo" after he purchased several volumes of 'My Name Is Shingo' by Kazuo Umezu.

My fellow hardware writer Andy is described as "probably has microwave ovens" in his About You. When the team queried the plural, Andy explained that was likely because he'd bought two from Amazon in the past, as "the first one blew up while making popcorn." Still, About You could only determine Andy 'probably' has a microwave.

You could say Pimax is copying Valve's homework with its new mini PC, the Spation. Though the Steam Machine is merely a black box, so you could say it also copied any number of other miscellaneous black rectangles itself; the Xbox Series X among them. Nevertheless, this is one similar-looking living room machine, and Pimax is even pitching it with SteamOS.

Pimax's machine is a mini PC with a whole bunch of power behind it. Pimax says it comes with either an RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070 Ti, and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

It packs in 32 GB of DDR5, a 1 TB SSD, and a 1000 W SFX PSU. It also supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and comes with 2x DisplayPort 2.1, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB4, and 6x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports.

So, it's much more capable than Valve's li'l box, though I shudder at the thought of the price. Pimax has not yet announced a price or launch date.

You can see how it all slots together under the removable rear panel in the render provided by Pimax below.

Most of the I/O is accessible at the back of the device. Slightly above and behind that is what looks to be a Mini-ITX motherboard with two DIMMs installed, presumably with some sort of solution to shift the rear I/O. Above that, the power supply, with a fan mounted above it. The GPU sits flat on the reverse of the unit, using a PCIe riser cable.

My only concern is how well that graphics card can breathe in there, and more broadly for temps, but there may be yet more fans within the unit. The front panel looks to be removeable—just like the Steam Machine—with some venting in there for the GPU.

It looks like a pretty smart layout, and not totally dissimilar to a Fractal Terra—the case I use for my own mini PC—sat upright. Pimax plans to offer a barebones kit that will require a user to install their own GPU, storage, and memory, which means at least parts of it are set to be pretty standardised.

The idea behind the Spation is to be more powerful than a gaming laptop to power high-end PC VR, in a smaller size than your average PC. Thereby easier to shift besides your TV unit for a spot of virtual reality in the evening. There is a bit of a gap in the market for this sorta thing—beyond simply building your own Mini-ITX gaming PC—as the real Steam Machine has been known to struggle with VR due to its Arch-based SteamOS.

Though that might also be the case for the Spation. Pimax is pitching it with both Windows and SteamOS support. It is just a regular PC, after all, so there's nothing stopping you from loading SteamOS onto anything with compatible hardware—namely AMD's gear, as Nvidia GPU support is an ongoing process in SteamOS. Which you choose should probably depend on whether you are planning to use it for VR or not. Even though the Steam Frame has shown what Linux can do in VR, and Pimax says it's bringing Pimax Play to Linux as a dedicated client, it does feel like Windows remains the easiest option.

Known for its many variants of VR headset, Pimax is back with yet more new products. This time, it seems to be following Valve's recent example, with a wireless VR headset, foveated streaming, ringfree VR controllers, and a very long Steam Machine.

Let's start with the VR headset, as Pimax isn't playing around when it comes to wireless capabilities on this thing. It's called the Crystal Pro, and it's totally wireless. Included in the box is a Wi-Fi 6E adapter, much like the Steam Frame, which hooks it up to a nearby gaming PC; however, Pimax is going one step further with an optional wireless streaming kit, 60G AirLink, that uses 60 GHz 2x2 MIMO for a higher-bandwidth, more robust connection.

"What if you could cut the cable and still send the image with no visual compression. That question is the reason this headset exists," Jaap Grolleman says in a prerecorded launch video.

Using two additional room antennas and two additional headset antennas, which poke out from the rear of the strap, Pimax is able to deliver up to 6 Gbps bandwidth—3 Gbps over each connection and each data stream sync'd up via the onboard Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 SoC.

Pimax says 60G AirLink adds much less latency than standard Wi-Fi streaming—1.8 ms to 12 ms by its own presentation—and it uses this technology to offer something called Native Foveated Streaming.

Sound familiar? Valve introduced foveated streaming with the Steam Frame as a way to save on bandwidth for virtual reality using eye tracking. The Frame only streams a frame in high resolution where a user is looking; everywhere outside of that focus area is streamed at a lower resolution. It works great, in my experience, as unlike foveated rendering, I've not been able to notice any sign of foveated streaming in action.

Pimax is using its Native Foveated Rendering in much the same way, tapping the onboard 120 Hz Omnivision eye tracking. The focus area in the Crystal Pro is actually streamed at native resolution. It's full quality—straight from your frame buffer. Further out from the focus area, the detail diminishes until the outer edges, where it's much lower quality. You shouldn't be able to perceive that lower detail, providing everything works as intended.

As for the headset, it uses twin QLEDs running at a resolution of 2880 x 2880 each and up to 120 Hz. It taps Mini-LED for the backlight, with 576 local dimming zones per eye, and 200 nits of brightness. I was only a little disappointed not to see Micro-OLED again here, but I suppose the Dream Air and Crystal Super are already offering that for a hefty sum.

Speaking of sums, the Crystal Pro does make the Steam Frame look affordable. It costs $1,399 for the base model, or $1,899 with the 60G AirLink system. That alone costs $599.

What's surprising for the Crystal Pro is that it uses aspheric glass lenses. Those require more room in the front of the headset than pancake lenses, which are in the Dream Air, Steam Frame, and Quest 3, but Pimax says they're better suited for eye tracking.

The Crystal Pro comes with SLAM 2.0 inside-out tracking, which is perhaps the most exciting thing here, in combination with the new ringless controllers. During my recent testing of the Dream Air, I found the inside-out tracking left me wanting more, and the old school halo'd controllers were a little wobbly at times. SLAM 2.0 combines four cameras, a motion sensor, and infrared illuminators for low-light tracking, which I'm hoping will help bring this in line with the Steam Frame's top-tier tracking.

The new ringless VR controllers take a leaf from the Steam Frame. They have dual triggers on both sides, TMR sticks, grip sensing, and the full complement of face buttons, which, much like the Frame, means they can be combined into one regular controller's worth of inputs.

Pimax is once again trying to do one better here, with a central module that sits in between the left and right-side pads to turn them into an actual controller. A neat idea, even if I can't see myself using it much in practice.

The Crystal Pro also shares another similarity with the Frame. It has swappable faceplates, adding full-colour passthrough and LiDAR, or Lighthouse support for outside-in tracking. It also has optional over-ear speakers that Pimax has rolled out before, but definitely take inspiration from the Valve Index.

To top it all off, Pimax is bringing out a gaming PC called the Pimax Spation, which looks oddly familiar. It's more or less a long Steam Machine.

If any of these have caught your eye, you'll have to wait a while longer before you can get your hands on them. There are no on-sale dates offered as of yet.

The October Amazon Prime Day sales are officially over—but as usual, a lot of the best deals on PC gaming gear are still running. I've spent the morning scouring our pages for the ones I think are most worthy of your time, and I've rounded up my picks into this handy post for your perusal.

• We're still curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

To keep things simple, I've limited myself to three deals per category. And yes, that includes graphics cards, SSDs, and some other items that are still a lot more expensive than they used to be pre-memory crisis.

That's because each of these deals represents the best value we can find right now, relative to the rest of the market—even if that market is a complete dumpster fire. Which, in the case of GPUs, is putting it mildly. Anyway, enough chat. To the deals!

Gaming PC deals

Gaming laptop deals

Gaming monitor deals

Graphics card deals

SSD deals

Gaming headset deals

Gaming mouse deals

Gaming keyboard deals

Gaming controller deals

Microsoft has just unveiled what it's calling the "most powerful Surface devices ever." Both powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark SOC, the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box are both available to pre-order now. Both Surface devices are slated for an October 16 release, the same day as a suite of other RTX Spark laptops.

Like the rest of the fleet, these will cost a pretty penny too, with the Surface Laptop Ultra starting at $2,599 and the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box going for $5,999. However, the Surface Laptop Ultra comes with something the rest doesn't: 'Magnetic Connect,' a new magnetic USB Type-C charger.

The Corporate Vice President of Surface, Brett Ostrum, wrote, "The included charging cable attaches magnetically to the right-side USB-C port and releases easily. The port remains fully functional for video, data, and other USB-C devices."

According to Microsoft, the Magnetic Connect is a world first. However, in principle, it's very similar to Apple's MagSafe connectors. My snarkiness aside, it's worth mentioning that MagSafe uses a proprietary cable, whereas the Magnetic Connect does not, and that fits it a bit more cleanly into the 'world first' claim.

Interesting to note, too, is that the design of the Magnetic Connect may have been influenced by recent changes to EU regulations. New rules seek to stem the tide of charging cable-related e-waste by requiring "all new devices sold in the EU must now support USB-C charging." This regulation was introduced in 2024, and originally only applied to portable devices. But as of April this year, the EU common charger rules have been rolled out to laptops as well.

Still, it's a weird thing to highlight in the announcement for a very powerful, very expensive laptop—excuse me if I struggle to muster up a sufficient level of excitement for a charger that magnetically snaps to the side of my Surface device.

Obviously, as a PC gamer, I'm most interested in the apparently RTX 5070-like gaming performance of an RTX Spark machine. But gaming isn't the sole focus of this machine; for that money, it really needs to be all singing, all dancing, so Microsoft also highlights that the Surface Laptop Ultra can "run AI models exceeding 120B parameters locally, with up to 1 petaflop of AI performance."

At $2,599, it's a pricey bit of kit for sure and touting "the world’s first built-in magnetic USB-C charging on a laptop" does little to dull the sting of that price tag. Worse still, with 128 GB of unified memory inside this bad boy, there's no ignoring that the AI industry and the resulting memory crisis are perhaps one reason this Surface is as expensive as it is.

It's rare to see as high as 50% off relatively modern gaming mice, so I was very surprised to see Glorious' Model D 2 all the way up to 85% off the day that Prime Day finished.

If you want to pick up the mouse yourself, it will cost $15 with code 'Glorious' if you are a first-time Woot user, or $20 with the same code if not. That's an astonishingly good deal on a mouse I really quite liked.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Starting from the top, the Model D 2 has more or less the specs you'd expect from a 2024 mid-range mouse. You are getting a max DPI of 26,000, a polling rate of 1,000 Hz, and in my time testing it, the BAMF 2.0 sensor is perfectly viable for competitive play.

Importantly, it's a very comfortable rodent and feels good in the palm. It's not ultra-light by 2026 standards, at 66 g, but I wouldn't call it heavy either.

It has a solid enough battery life, giving 110 hours in its 2.4 GHz mode, and up to 210 in Bluetooth. That makes it a solid rodent to throw in a bag and connect to your iPad, then bring home and play a shooter with. I know, as I did that exact thing in my testing.

As far as looks are concerned, it is covered in RGB, though I would often opt to go without it, as the colourful lights cut battery life down to almost 10% at full blast.

The honeycomb look is obviously not for everyone, but I certainly don't mind it, and I found the clicks and scroll wheel to be satisfying and accurate.

The Model D 2 Wireless may have struggled to differentiate itself back in 2024 for $100, but getting it for as low as $15 quite literally made my jaw drop. I cannot spot a single mouse offering more for less cash, and my biggest concern is that Woot will only let you buy two per account. If I needed a mouse right now, I think I'd honestly pick up two of these, one for me and one for a friend.

👉Shop all of Woot's peripherals deals here👈

If you're looking for more memory, these are tough times indeed. Prebuilt PCs used to be the most cost effective way to get oodles of RAM, though even that market is seeing the gigabytes shrink. Thankfully, that's not so for the best gaming PC deal I've seen all week.

Our Ian praised the powerhouse in question in his HP Omen 35L review last month. A not quite small form factor PC, this bad boy is packing in 32 GB of DDR5 inside its tasteful 35 litre frame. Not only that, but you're also getting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, plus a generous 2 TB of SSD storage—all at a whopping 44% discount when you buy directly from HP.

• Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

To be upfront, the cut down price tag still amounts to $2,800. Given our times of memory supply crisis, there's a lot packed into that price.

On top of that, you're also getting what we reckon is the best CPU for gaming overall, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Make no mistake, this bad boy is a beast.

Ian's testing of the RTX 5070 Ti model was most favourable, turning in "superb framerates" during 1440p gaming. Even under load, this machine keeps its cool; Ian writes, "It's certainly a very quiet machine. [...] Work it hard and all you'll hear is a rushing sound like wind through trees that doesn't stop, the working of the pump and the motors in the fans largely unnoticeable—of the PCG benchmark suite, it's only Time Spy Extreme that really gets it fired up, and only then near the end."

As someone gaming on the notoriously noisy iBuyPower RDY Y40, that sounds pretty blissful to me. Ian adds, "It's a system that keeps everything very nice and cool in our tests, with even the idea of 70°C something neither the CPU nor GPU is prepared to entertain during a Metro Exodus run."

For comparison's sake, my rig huffs and puffs past the 80 °C-mark during thermal stress tests—even without any anime figures crammed inside of it. By all accounts, the HP Omen 35L is an elegant daily driver.

"Buying a pre-built desktop system like this is, in many ways, PC gaming on easy mode," Ian concludes, "You plug it in, it works, you get great results—there's no obsessive selection of parts, no creation of multiple lists, and certainly no screwdrivers. It may take a bit of the fun out of getting a new PC, but at least it's not a laptop."

I've been looking for graphics card deals all week long, and I've not found a huge amount to write about. There's really only this RX 9070 GRE at MSRP, and this RX 9060 XT 8 GB for $400.

We track graphics card prices all year long, and let me tell ya, it's not a pretty chart right now. Take a look for yourself below—we log the lowest price we can find at any major retailer for each model of graphics card.

Lowest retail price for each GPU model

We've been measuring the lowest available price of each current-gen GPU since August 14, 2025.

Lowest pricing (Price, $)

Week

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GREAMD RX 9060 XT 16 GBAMD RX 9060 XT 8 GBAMD RX 9070AMD RX 9070 XTIntel Arc B570Intel Arc B580Nvidia RTX 5050Nvidia RTX 5060Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GBNvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8 GBNvidia RTX 5070Nvidia RTX 5070 TiNvidia RTX 5080

Lowest pricing Data

Timestamp (Week)	AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE (Price, $)	AMD RX 9060 XT 16 GB (Price, $)	AMD RX 9060 XT 8 GB (Price, $)	AMD RX 9070 (Price, $)	AMD RX 9070 XT (Price, $)	Intel Arc B570 (Price, $)	Intel Arc B580 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5050 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5070 (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti (Price, $)	Nvidia RTX 5080 (Price, $)
1	N/A	370	280	600	700	230	260	250	300	430	368	550	780	1100
2	N/A	370	270	600	700	230	260	250	300	430	340	550	750	1099
3	N/A	370	280	550	700	230	250	250	291	430	370	524	750	1000
4	N/A	370	280	550	695	230	250	250	296	430	345	546	750	1000
5	N/A	350	270	600	670	230	250	250	300	430	340	481	749	1000
6	N/A	350	270	600	670	230	250	240	289	379	340	499	749	929
7	N/A	350	270	550	650	230	250	240	299	430	350	520	750	999
8	N/A	350	270	550	650	200	250	250	299	430	342	500	749	980
9	N/A	350	270	560	650	220	250	250	299	430	323	500	750	999
10	N/A	360	270	550	600	210	250	250	299	430	340	480	730	989
11	N/A	340	250	550	600	200	250	230	280	400	320	489	699	990
12	N/A	350	275	530	600	200	250	220	279	400	320	500	730	989
13	N/A	350	280	530	600	200	250	220	279	420	342	527	750	1000
14	N/A	370	280	530	600	202	250	220	279	420	313	540	750	1000
15	N/A	380	288	530	600	202	240	200	279	430	350	499	749	1000
16	N/A	380	288	530	620	202	240	200	270	430	350	499	750	1100
17	N/A	390	310	580	660	200	250	235	260	430	330	549	750	1230
18	N/A	390	310	580	700	200	250	240	290	450	330	540	829	1268
19	N/A	400	310	580	720	200	260	240	299	450	330	549	899	1380
20	N/A	440	310	600	720	200	290	240	299	520	330	620	1000	1350
21	N/A	440	350	590	730	250	290	260	299	520	351	620	950	1365
22	N/A	400	346	630	730	250	300	260	299	520	360	620	950	1365
23	N/A	440	346	630	730	250	300	260	340	520	360	630	950	1290
24	N/A	440	346	620	730	250	300	260	340	520	360	625	950	1290
25	N/A	440	346	610	730	250	300	260	349	550	360	630	950	1250
26	N/A	440	340	610	730	250	300	290	349	550	360	604	950	1260
27	N/A	440	340	630	730	250	300	290	349	570	360	640	950	1290
28	N/A	440	346	620	720	250	290	290	349	515	390	630	900	1250
29	N/A	449	350	620	710	250	290	290	349	500	390	636	990	1290
30	N/A	440	350	620	710	260	290	290	330	500	390	630	990	1290
31	N/A	440	350	620	670	260	290	290	330	500	380	599	990	1290
32	N/A	430	360	620	710	260	290	290	310	515	380	599	990	1290
33	N/A	430	360	600	710	260	290	290	349	490	400	599	980	1290
34	N/A	440	360	620	710	260	290	290	349	550	380	599	980	1270
35	N/A	430	360	600	700	260	304	290	350	550	380	599	900	1290
36	550	440	360	600	700	260	300	290	340	550	370	599	980	1250
37	550	440	350	600	700	250	304	290	340	570	370	599	980	1250
38	550	440	350	600	700	250	304	290	340	570	370	599	980	1250
39	500	400	360	600	700	250	298	290	340	570	330	599	920	1250
40	500	430	360	600	700	260	291	290	340	565	330	599	955	1250
41	500	430	360	600	700	250	290	290	339	560	330	560	900	1250
42	550	450	360	635	690	260	290	290	350	570	380	550	950	1250
43	500	470	370	650	720	260	310	299	359	650	420	755	1030	1290
44	500	470	400	650	720	260	310	299	N/A	780	420	763	1088	1479
45	530	460	360	630	730	260	310	299	359	773	389	800	1150	1550
46	530	470	400	650	740	260	310	299	359	570	389	759	1150	1550
47	520	470	409	650	740	260	310	299	359	570	389	725	1150	1450
48	500	470	430	650	760	260	330	N/A	359	780	389	779	1150	1450
49	570	500	450	667	760	260	330	310	380	780	488	779	1150	1653
50	550	520	400	700	800	290	330	310	439	789	470	779	1150	1654

if you look at the highlighted line for the RX 9060 XT 8 GB, you can see a slight dip at the end. That's the reason I'm calling out this deal right now.

The RX 9060 XT 8 GB should cost $300 at MSRP. Though it was more like $350 in reality, even at launch. It's been over $400 for over a month now, up to $450 in recent weeks. So, at its current price of $400, it's far from a historical saving, but it's currently cheaper than it has been for a while.

• Take a look at the other discounted GPUs we've spotted or follow us on WhatsApp

It's a lot cheaper than the competition, too. The RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB is around $470, the 16 GB version of the RX 9060 XT around $520, and the RTX 5060 is $439.

In another way to force you into giving up your user data, like most big stores these days, Newegg is demanding you enter your email to "unlock" this deal. It's free to do, but it still sucks.

Right, onto the card, and this is the 8 GB version. It's been less affected by price hikes than the 16 GB version, on account of the memory crisis, but it does fare a little worse in testing for the slimmer VRAM.

Gaming benchmarks - midrange graphics cards

Performance testing for AMD and Nvidia's midrange graphics cards in a range of games at 1080p

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High)Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra)F1 24 (1080p Ultra high)Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

71

58

RX 9060 XT 16 GB

73

63

RTX 5060

64

48

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

74

62

020406080

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	71 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 16 GB	73 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	64 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	74 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

41

26

RX 9060 XT 16 GB

49

39

RTX 5060

46

30

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

52

35

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data

Product	Value
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	41 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 16 GB	49 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	46 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	52 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

82

66

RX 9060 XT 16 GB

95

61

RTX 5060

73

39

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

90

73

0255075100

F1 24 (1080p Ultra high) Data

Product	Value
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	82 Avg FPS, 66 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 16 GB	95 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	73 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	90 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

93

64

RX 9060 XT 16 GB

96

42

RTX 5060

87

47

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

101

65

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	93 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 16 GB	96 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	87 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	101 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Though not always quicker than the RTX 5060 when it comes to ray-traced games, the RX 9060 XT does generally come out ahead in most other titles. And by a decent margin, too.

It's the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB that tends to roundly beat the RX 9060 XT. When these cards first came out, that was more of a problem due to the RTX 5060 Ti's price sitting just a small bit ahead of the RX 9060 XT. Nowadays, Radeon cards are cheaper than their GeForce equivalents. so it's not such a concern.

Still, if you have a fairly modern graphics card and you could wait a little longer to buy a replacement, I'd probably do so. For anyone not in that advantageous position, the RX 9060 XT 8 GB at $400 is at least only a small increase on where it was back at launch. That means you can rest easy at night, knowing AI didn't completely screw you out of your hard-earned cash.